Page 5622 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 17 November 2010
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a very important message that needs to be sent to the commonwealth parliament that all parties in this place support change. But I am unaware where the Canberra Liberals stand at this point.
It is wrong that the commonwealth executive, not even the parliament of the commonwealth but the executive alone, can overturn a validly made law of this Assembly. It is wrong that people who have no interest in and who are not affected by what happens in the territory have a say in the validity of laws passed by this Assembly.
I think it is worth considering the constitutional framework that we exist in. We are a federal system and central to that system is the delineation of powers between the levels of government. Professor Michael Crommelin from the University of Melbourne, in the book, Essays on Law and Government, edited by Paul Finn, put it very well. He wrote:
The values inherent in Australian Federalism are regional diversity, local participation and decentralisation. The framers of the Constitution sought to realise these values through the establishment of two levels of government with limited powers distributed by the Constitution.
Our federal system is predicated on regional parliaments exercising significant legislative authority over their respective jurisdictions. Indeed, the scope of their powers is unlimited and extends to everything not otherwise assigned to the commonwealth. Sections 51 and 52 of the constitution articulate and limit the legislative powers of the commonwealth parliament.
There has been some controversy in the High Court about whether these limitations apply to the plenary power given to the commonwealth by section 122. And this question was largely resolved only last year in the case Wurridjal v the Commonwealth of Australia. The High Court found that the constitutional limitations of section 51 of the constitution do apply to the territories. In effect, the residents of the Northern Territory and the ACT have the same rights as those in the states. We are not second-class citizens and it follows logically that we should have the same rights to legislate in our own interests as those in the states do. Our legislative jurisdiction should be the same as state parliaments.
I have not heard one argument why it is that this Assembly is not capable of legislating on the full gamut of responsibilities not allocated to the commonwealth by the constitution, as in the case of the states. This applies equally to the additional limitations created by section 23 of the self-government act and the offensive disallowance provision created by section 35. The time has certainly come for a comprehensive review of the self-government act. More than 20 years on, I think it is well and truly time that such a review was undertaken.
The Greens also support the issues identified for consideration in paragraph (2) of Ms Porter’s motion and share the predisposition for change implied in the motion. Consistent with all other parliaments, we should be able to set the size of the parliament and we should not be subject to the disallowance provisions or any other unreasonable limitations on our democratic rights.
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